Transcript

00:00:00

>> I take all responsibility. This was my fault.>> U.S. Olympic swimmer, Ryan Lochte admitted he overexaggerated his story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio. Telling Brazil's TV Globo, that he and three teammates were frightened when a security guard at a gas station pointed a gun at them.

00:00:16

>> I ripped a poster off the wall in the gas station. And coming out the security guards had a gun. We stepped out of the taxi cab. The guns were pointed at us and one of the guys, the translator guys, someone came from the gas station to help out, saying that you have to pay money.

00:00:40

So you can either call that a robbery, you can call that extortion, or you can just say we had to pay the money for the damage of that poster. I can't say what it was.>> The gold medalist came under fire last week after surveillance video from the gas station contradicted his original story.

00:00:59

That he and three other U.S. swimmers had been held up by men posing as police and that a gun had been pointed at his head. Under questioning, teammate Gunnar Bentz said security guards confronted the swimmers after they urinated behind some bushes and that Lochte had argued with the guards.

00:01:15

He said they paid the guards $50 cash because they wanted to leave. In another interview for NBC, Today Show host Matt Lauer said Lochte's initial account was about quote, the mean streets of Rio and not about making a deal. Lochte responding, that's why I'm taking full responsibility for it.

00:01:33

Lochte, Bentz and two other swimmers involved in the incident, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen are all back now in the United States. The U.S. Olympic Committee setting up a disciplinary panel to investigate their actions, and could sanction the athletes for violating policy. Brazilian authorities recommending Feigen and Lochte be criminally charged with falsely reporting a crime.